


to what their deeds deserve

by myrkks



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Depression, Getting Together, M/M, Needles, Obsessive Behavior, Post-Canon, Sexual Content, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-16 23:26:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15448206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrkks/pseuds/myrkks
Summary: Hinata doesn't come to him.  He halfway expects it: Hinata Hajime, a stumbling mess of a boy, seventeen and with more limb than torso, more heart than body — he finds himself sitting, waiting, expecting him.But they're not seventeen, and Hinata doesn't come.





	to what their deeds deserve

He doesn't really remember waking up, but he lies and says that he does. He comes into himself some time later, sees fourteen faces all around him awake and speaking in hushed tones, and realizes that even now, he’s last.

His first thought is that Nanami was the traitor, and he is in hell. It would be fitting for the way the dishwater-grey room looms around them, the way the walls close in, the way Hinata’s hair is too long and too dark and the way he stares at him from across the table like he’s telling him a secret.

There’s something there to that; a baton is passed. The memories will come later, but Komaeda traces the dark eye bags and gaunt cheekbones of a Hinata too old and understands two things, suddenly: one, that Nanami was the traitor. Two, that this is a different hell.

He doesn't remember falling asleep that night. He never does.

—

Hinata doesn't come to him. He halfway expects it: Hinata Hajime, a stumbling mess of a boy, seventeen and with more limb than torso, more heart than body — he finds himself sitting, waiting, expecting Hinata.

But they're not seventeen, and Hinata doesn't come. Komaeda waits impatiently in the sea of radio silence for days with rage prickling harsh under his skin before he stumbles into the kitchen one morning and sees Kamukura’s mess of hair, tied low and messy into a bun.

“I’m dying, you know,” Komaeda says mock cheerfully, leaning up against the counter while the other man is in the middle of making the most perfect sunny-side-up egg Komaeda’s ever seen, hands boney and pretty around the spatula, posture straight and perfect as he looms over the stove.

With the concentration of a saint, Hinata breaks the yolk and watches it run messy and ugly down the pan. “I know,” he answers quietly.

Hinata must say something to Tsumiki, because she approaches him unsure and bright with a clipboard and needle in hand. Komaeda watches her trembling shoulders and thinks that he doesn't care for her any more than he had before the game — doesn't care for her any less, either.

When he rolls up his sleeve and holds out his arm, the deadweight of Junko’s hand makes him feel like he’s pitching forward, forward, forward. There’s a spark in his eye and a catch in his throat and he waits, patiently, for Tsumiki to startle at the sight of it.

Except that she doesn’t. “You’re going to feel a pinch,” she tells him, more in her element, and he thinks about the third island, about the hospital, about the taste of his lies on his tongue. About a figure standing unsure in the doorway while he begged and cursed until he said something too true and it walked away.

“I know,” Komaeda says, and doesn't jump at all when the needle digs deep.

—

The hand doesn't hurt, and it doesn't rot; it hangs empty and pale from just below his elbow, a promise and a reminder. You did this, it says. This is what you are, it says. You will never be free of this, and you don’t want to be, it says.

Komaeda knows that; he doesn't jump at all at the sound of Hinata’s voice behind him. “I could make you something for that,” he offers, and Komaeda’s rabbit heart flies into his throat. Hinata, with all the wrong hair and the wrong eyes, a figure unsure in a doorway — Hinata reaches out.

He wants so, so badly to hate him for it. “Showing off, Kamukura-kun?” he drawls, elbows on his desk, back to the doorway; a dead hand strokes idly down the page of a book he’s only pretending to read. “I know you can; the question isn't if you can. The question is if I’ll _let_ you.”

The seconds tick on. Komaeda resists looking for as long as he can; he really does. By the time he turns, the open doorway is long-since empty, and he has a moment of: it isn't possible, couldn't be, for him to leave without Komaeda hearing, not Hinata, not that stumbling mess of a boy, more limb than torso and heart than body — but then he remembers. They're not seventeen anymore.

Part of him expects it to hurt when he snaps Junko’s wrist. Part of him knows from the start that it won’t.

—

When Komaeda speaks, Hinata is Kamukura, and Komaeda delights in the smooth sound of the name, the way it makes Hinata crackle into a thousand pieces like he’s been shocked or stunned, tossed in the wash and hung out to dry; the way he is the only one to say it out of any of them, the only one willing to defy Hinata’s silent, selfish wish to not be reminded of the blood on his hands every time he’s addressed. He owns that name, now.

In his head, Hinata is Hinata, and Komaeda hates him for that. He knows that Hinata could be perfect if he wanted to, and _talented,_ so immensely, breathtakingly talented, knows that he could fix generators faster than Souda, dance prettier than Saionji, sew up Komaeda’s loose edges nice and neat in a way that Tsumiki never could.

He watches Hinata do none of these things. He watches Hinata pace in circles and peel at his skin and retreat into corners to stare down at his hands when he thinks no one’s looking at him.

Komaeda is looking at him. Komaeda feels like there’s something he’s meant to say to him: Hinata, who’d sold his soul and shattered his future, who’d taken fate gently by the hand and then individually broken each of its fingers. Hinata, who doesn't care about rules and what can be done because he will always push himself harder, harder, harder — coughing up blood but still _harder_ , killing his friends but still _harder_ — because limits don’t exist and cycles of luck don’t exist and nothing exists except for what he can do. Hinata, who values utility so much and himself so little.

Hinata who had once loved the world so, so much.

But he doesn't say anything. Sitting still and careful in the corner, Hinata stares down at his hands with Kamukura’s hair swarming around his face. Across the room, the deadweight of Junko’s hand makes Komaeda feel like he’s pitching forward, forward, forward.

—

It would be wrong to say that he gets obsessed; he doesn't get obsessed. But he watches Hinata putter around the island and pick up this and that, only use talents that don’t step on toes because of _course_ he doesn’t, not Hinata Hajime, not everyone’s friend who everyone loves. Not Hinata, who talks to everyone and is nice to everyone and considers the feelings of everyone — even Hanamura, who says things that makes Komaeda’s skin crawl; even Sonia, a full foot taller than she’d been in the game and as gaunt and off-putting as a bleached skeleton; even Togami, whose identity has been found out and who still won’t give his real name. Hinata is kind to all of them, and Komaeda wishes so badly that it filled him with the sort of rage that makes him want to kill him.

He doesn't want to kill him; he wants to crack him open. He wants to crawl under his skin and in between his ribs and feel his perfect, useless bones between his fingers. He wants to break him apart and bury his hands in his viscera and lay his ear against his still beating heart.

But he doesn't want to kill him. “Kamukura-kun,” he greets, glancing up from his coffee and oozing sweetness, oozing invitation: hate me, hate me, hate me. “Not too busy today for little old me?”

Komaeda doesn't help out much on the island; his body is weaker than most, and his talent is more dangerous than useful, and also he doesn't want to. No one asks him to do anything, anyway; he’s not on any chore or calling list. Fourteen other faces, and Komaeda’s still last.

Hinata turns his eyes away; an annoyingly toned arm comes up so that he can scratch at the back of his neck. He’s cut his hair again, recently; it’s in between the phases of being short enough to leave and long enough to tie, and a lock drapes down into his face in a way that bothers Komaeda for reasons he can’t quite put his finger on.

“Do you want to come help us out there?” Hinata asks awkwardly. “We’re putting a fence up around the garden.”

So they sent Hinata as the ambassador. Komaeda’s lip curls. “How utterly _gracious_ of you,” he bites, “to spare the time to invite someone you so clearly hate. Or are you that desperate for hands, Kamukura-kun?”

This isn't really how he’d imagined this conversation going, but there’s still something deeply satisfying at Hinata’s flinch. “I don’t hate you,” Hinata answers quietly, and then, “Are you going to help us or not?”

Komaeda doesn't think he likes this new, subdued, tolerant Hinata, who has given up so fully on trying to do anything but deal with him. “You do hate me,” he insists, and when Hinata lifts his head and opens his mouth, Komaeda ignores him and rushes forward.

“You hate me because I make you think of it,” he continues, and he can hear it, feel it, the way his voice pitches higher and screechier. “I make you think about it. I _know_ who you are — ”

“They _all_ know who I am!” Hinata hisses, and Komaeda expects to feel more pleasure than he does at the way that the other man’s voice cracks in the middle. “They all know who I am, and what I’ve done, and — Jesus Christ, Komaeda, you don’t have to let this die; you really don’t. But don’t expect me to stick around you like we’re still friends.”

Still friends, meaning that they had been friends once. Komaeda takes a sip of his coffee and frowns, bitter temper disappearing as quickly as it’d appeared. Figures.

Hinata watches him with narrowed, suspicious eyes. “Just,” he sighs, “if you decide you want to come by, just — you know where I am.”

Komaeda scoffs into his mug, choosing not to glorify the offer with a response. His back to him, Hinata pauses in the doorway.

“I don’t hate you,” he echoes again, something just south of angry, just adjacent to soft; and before Komaeda can even snap his eyes back up to him, he’s gone.

—

It’s not exactly a surprise that Kuzuryu comes to him, as much as he’d like it to be.

“Is this the part where you tell me,” Komaeda starts, lowly amused, “that if I hurt him, you’ll kill me?”

Kuzuryu hasn't aged well, like the toil and violence of his life turned him into a man twice his age; his eyepatch, dark and already worn, faces Komaeda like an accusation. Komaeda keeps his ankles primly crossed, ratty jacket discarded to show his youthful skin and someone else’s hand.

“No,” Kuzuryu sighs, and Komaeda’s almost disappointed at the lack of reaction, the way the other man gazes at him with more pity than caution, like he’s more charity case than liability. He finds himself thinking: now, _this_ is the sort of rage that makes him want to kill someone.

“I’m mostly here because Sonia wants you more — ” He waves a hand around the air, brow furrowed. “ — involved. So I’m here to ask if you want to clean out the old store with us. And because — I’d send Hinata every time if I could; God knows everyone else seems content to. But…”

“But he doesn't want to come,” Komaeda provides; the anger in his gut turns into something else, something deeper, a low simmer that makes him want to snap Hinata’s neck if it’ll make him _look_ at him. “He doesn't want to see me.”

“I don’t want him to,” Kuzuryu answers simply; there is an importance and a message in his one yellow eye. “I really don’t.”

And Kuzuryu’s gaze doesn’t turn down to Komaeda’s hand, not once.

—

In between, he misses Nanami. He tries not to.

—

Tsumiki keeps coming to him: sometimes for blood, sometimes for check ups, sometimes just for awkward, stammering conversations, her clipboard clutched tight in white fingers. Part of him enjoys those: the way that when she talks too long, she becomes someone else, becomes herself; he tells himself he’s doing her a favor. None of the others let her talk long enough for her to lose her head. He knows that.

“I — I don’t know how much I can do for you, Komaeda-kun,” she confesses quietly in one of their briefer meetings. “We won’t know for sure until the tests come back, but if what you've told me is true — not that I don’t believe you! I just mean that I… I’m a very good nurse, but I…”

He doesn't want to comfort her; he just wants her to stop talking. “I know,” he says, placing Junko’s dead hand over hers and cursing her when she doesn't react. “It’s okay, Tsumiki-san. You’ve done your best for a good-for-nothing like me.”

When he goes to Hinata, he tells himself it’s because he’s sick of the other man’s cowardice. He tells himself it’s because he wants, desperately, to see him dead.

But Hinata opens the door with Kamukura’s hair yanked harsh into a bun, Kamukura’s red eyes more tired than dead, and he leans against the doorway like he doesn't have enough will to support him and Komaeda feels all of his rage dissipate into something deeper, something palpable under his skin. He realizes that they haven't stood this close in months, in ever — not since the game, if there ever was a game, if any of that was real or mattered, if any of that even existed outside of Komaeda’s head.

“Komaeda,” Hinata greets, less pity than caution and less caution than exhaustion, and Komaeda thinks that no matter how many years and realities pass, he is a liability, and will be a liability until he dies. Only Hinata knows what he’s capable of; only Hinata’s ever seen into his head.

He’s kissing him before he even realizes it. Hinata is warm, his lips rough and chapped, and Komaeda wants to _destroy_ him, slam him into a wall until his perfect teeth crumble out of his perfect mouth, rake his nails down his thighs and bite his shoulders and neck till he bleeds. He wants to tie him up so that he _has_ look at him; his pulse hammers, pulses, breathes see me see me see me —

Then Hinata pulls away. “Komaeda, what the _hell_ ,” he snarls, and Komaeda hates his long hair but loves the idea of the leverage it could give him.

He steps forward into Hinata’s space, uses his slight height advantage to pin him to the doorway. “Tell me you haven't thought about it,” he spits back, mean smirk pulling at his lips — feels it stutter and drop when Hinata’s eyes dart away.

“We shouldn’t,” Hinata replies simply, lowly.

When Komaeda laughs he can hear the entirety of his piss-poor rabbit heart pattering in his throat like a warning. “It doesn't matter,” he breathes, clutching Hinata’s face so tight that his nails dig deep, ugly, gorgeous red into the other man’s cheeks. “I’m dying; it doesn't matter.” Let me have this, he’s saying; please let me have this.

Hinata hesitates before he tilts Komaeda’s chin down to kiss him; it’s slow and sweet and so painfully inexperienced and he should've guessed, really, because Hinata Hajime never had time for anything like this and Kamukura Izuru never cared, but. But.

But Hinata kisses him like he gives a damn about him and pulls away with such sad, defeated eyes that Komaeda can hardly breathe. “Close the door,” Hinata says simply, and leaves Komaeda in the doorway to sit on the bed.

Komaeda wants to ruin him, so he decides that he will, presses him into the sheets and shoves his tongue in his mouth. He doesn't kiss him like he loves him, because he doesn’t. He kisses him because Hinata is ignoring him, and Komaeda will not stand for being ignored.

Hinata gasps when Komaeda sucks at his neck, breathes something close to a moan when Komaeda bites down — and when he bites down, he bites down _hard_. “No marks — ” he hisses, and Komaeda laughs into his shoulder as he rips the other man’s plain, ugly dress shirt open.

“Why?” he asks, teeth showing in something between a smile and a threat. “Want to leave yourself pristine for the next person to come to your door?”

“What?” Hinata stammers, “ _No_ , of course n — ”, and Komaeda dips his head to put his mouth on Hinata’s chest with a halfway biting, halfway warm, “Shut _up_.”

Hinata’s already hard when Komaeda reaches into his pants with one hand. Komaeda nips harsh at the skin over the other man’s collarbone as his thumb swipes hard over the head, and Hinata throws his head back with a moan just bordering on pained. “Komaeda,” he croaks, so desperate already, and Komaeda smothers a self-satisfied grin into his chest. Hinata’s nails rake at Komaeda’s back with something like permanence and he gasps, “Komaeda, _please_ — ”, and Komaeda isn't even entirely sure of who or where he is when he surges up to kiss him.

“I hate you,” Komaeda gasps into Hinata’s mouth, “I hate you, I hate you — ” I want to hate you, I want to hate you, make me hate you, make me hate you, make me hate you —

And Hinata yanks away and slams his hands into Komaeda’s shoulders. “You need to go,” he breathes, ripping Komaeda’s hands out of his pants. “I — you need to go.”

“What?” he asks incredulously, trying his best to stay looming over Hinata even as the other man wiggles out from underneath him; he feels a deep, satisfied kick when Hinata goes to button his shirt and finds most of his buttons missing, but it’s drowned out in the rest of it: Hinata frowning, Hinata looking away, Hinata _leaving_ —

“It’s not — ” Hinata starts, stops. A game, then; fill in the blank: it’s not you, it’s not what I want, it’s not your fault. Hinata shakes his head, shirt hanging open, and goes to his door. The lock Komaeda’d turned when he’d come in unlocks with a click that spells finality. “You have to go,” he echoes, head down.

Komaeda doesn't think he likes this new, subdued, tolerant Hinata, who has given up so fully on trying to change him. “Fine,” he intones cooly, running Junko’s dead hand along Hinata’s bare ribs on his way out. “Try not to miss me too much.”

He waits for the “don’t worry; I won’t”, but it doesn't come. The door closes quietly behind him, and it hurts more, somehow, than if it had slammed shut.

—

He sulks and Hinata doesn't come to him. He occupies all the public spaces, waits in the kitchen, tries for pointed eye contact over group meals, and Hinata doesn't come to him. He sits alone in his room and pretends to read, and Hinata doesn't come to him.

He remembers standing in front of a pool, recalling plane crashes and hope, when the world had clicked into place so securely for him. He remembers sitting in a library, disclosing his medical history, his fears and wants and the fact that no one is willing to inherit his soul. He remembers the Strawberry House, the taste of sharp honesty in his mouth, sudden and painful as broken glass: I know that you don’t matter at all, so why do I care about you?

He remembers that they're not seventeen anymore. He remembers that maybe they never were.

—

Tsumiki gets the results back. Tsumiki leads him through an obligatory check and hands him a printed page on the thin paper they always use for lab results and tells him bright and pleased and stammering, “Congratulations.”

It’s not his fault that he breaks the cabinet, tips it over with just one hand, just one, weak muscles straining and trembling at the effort, not his fault that the shatter echoes in the room and the glass splits and splinters and slices his ankles like vindication — or maybe it is.

It’s dark when Hinata comes to him.

“You made a mess of the infirmary,” he says quietly by way of greeting; Komaeda hears the click of the door closing, the croak of his bed as Hinata sits, and doesn't look up from his book. Junko’s hand rests heavy on his desk.

“My apologies for the inconvenience,” Komaeda responds evenly, making a show of turning the page. Hinata says nothing.

Until he does. “You could let me, you know,” he reminds, and his tone isn't gentle, but it’s closer to gentle than it is to anything else.

When Komaeda turns, it’s to the sight of Hinata on his bed, shirt buttoned all the way up, angry purple peeking out from under his collar, a robotic arm clutched in his hands. His posture is faux lax, but his knuckles are white around his creation; he’s cut his hair again since the last time he’d seen him, messy length and ugly bangs, and Komaeda thinks that there’s something very, intensely sudden to it.

— Or maybe it’s been building to this.

He’s standing in front of Hinata before he even realizes it, placing his living hand over the cool metal, like saying hello. “I could be wrong,” he simpers, but there’s no heat in it, he wants there to be heat in it, “but I don’t think that you ever actually asked, Hinata-kun.”

The name slips out of his mouth entirely by accident but he has to pretend, now, that it’s on purpose. Hinata stares up at him with his wide, intent target eyes.

“Let me,” he says, hand tangling in the front of Komaeda’s shirt, hard enough to ruin it, and it’s not a question, but Komaeda thinks that he will just have to allow Hinata this, too.

The weight of Kamukura’s hand pitches him forward, forward, forward.


End file.
